A patient who can not move freely or is confined to bed due to some reason tends to suffer from bedsore and tissue necrosis as a result of poor blood circulation and localized damage to the skin under pressure over a long time. To avoid the bedridden patient from forming bedsore, an alternating pressure air mattress has been developed and introduced into the market.
A conventional alternating pressure air mattress includes a plurality of air cells that can be inflated and deflated, and a pump that is used to inflate and deflate the air cells alternately. With the alternately inflated and deflated air cells, the bedridden patient's body areas frequently contacting with the bed are not constantly subjected to pressure and the possibility of forming bedsore on the patient's skin is effectively reduced.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional alternating pressure air mattress structure, which mainly includes an air mattress 10 and an inflating device 11 located outside the air mattress 10. The air mattress 10 includes a plurality of transverse supporting air cells 101 parallelly arranged side by side; and the inflating device 11 includes an air delivery controller 111 and a plurality of air delivery lines 112 connected to between the supporting air cells 101 and the air delivery controller 111.
The above-described conventional alternating pressure air mattress structure has some disadvantages. First, the air delivery controller 111 is located outside the air mattress 10, and a large part of the air delivery lines 112 is exposed from the air mattress 10. The exposed air delivery lines 112 not only cause difficulty in organizing the lines, but also tend to trip someone nearby. Second, in the case the supporting air cells 101 of the conventional air mattress structure are deflated or leaked, the patient lying thereon is no longer supported by the supporting air cells and in direct contact with the hard bed frame, which will cause discomfort to the patient and even cause bedsore in some worse condition.
In view of the disadvantages of the conventional air mattress structure, it is tried by the inventor to develop an improved inflatable air mattress device, so that the air delivery controller and the air mattress together form an integral air mattress structure.